500.A15a4/182

Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the British Ambassador (Lindsay)

The British Ambassador came in to tell me that he had seen my message to Mr. Henderson and understood I had received a reply of appreciation. The Ambassador said he wanted to tell me that he felt sure that Henderson appreciated it even more than he could express. I told him that, without disparagement of anyone else, I regarded Mr. Henderson as about the most earnest and sincere advocate of disarmament that I met in Europe. The Ambassador said he thought that was so. He said that Henderson had a simple mind but when he took hold of an idea he hung to it with great determination.

I told the Ambassador that I appreciated the difficulties under which Henderson would labor in regard to the Disarmament Conference, and that we sympathized with him because we wanted that Conference to be a success, as I had pointed out to the Ambassador in my letter to him of last winter. The Ambassador mentioned that reports were coming out in Europe to the effect that intimations of a desire for a postponement of the Disarmament Conference were coming from this country. I replied that that was not so; that we wanted the Conference to go on. I told him we recognized the difficulties; that I had pointed out in my letters to him that there were certain European problems which must be settled before the Conference, and that some of the European statesmen are now faced with the difficult dilemma of either solving those problems or asking for an adjournment, but we had not asked for nor suggested an adjournment.

H[enry] L. S[timson]